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CORN 

Moods from Mid- America 

by 

HAROLD NORLING SW ANSON 




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CQEBRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



CORN 



CORN 



MOODS FROM MID-AMERICA 

By 

Harold Norling Swanson 




Malteaser Publishing Company 
Grinnell, Iowa 



COPYRIGHT 1922 BY 
HAROLD NORLING S\V ANSON -'^'f 



First Printing, August IQ22 

OCi 16 22 

©CU683734. 






TO 

The Day When 

The Corn Coufttry 

Will Tell Its Own Stories 



CONTENTS 

I. PROEM. 

II. HUMDRUM. 

III. AT THE FEET OF EROS. 

IV. FRAGMENTS: BLUE AND SILVER. 
V. BOOK CLOSED ON A FINGER. 

VI. l'envoi. 



I. 

PROEM 



A DOG BAYS THE MOON 

His wail, climbing with the strength of agony, 
Shivers in the snow-blue air. 
And the cold, beautiful body of the moon 
Is as inaccessible as ever. 

So do I cry after what I want to tell. 

I have found out some things for myself — 

I know what I know. 

Who cares 

If I gibber madly to the white heart of the sky 1 

The moon and I have our secrets. 



11 



II. 



HUMDRUM 



A SENATOR TALKS TO HIS CONSTITUENCY IN 
THE CORN BELT 

A kite 

Dances in the scudding gray 

Of April sky. 

Is it fretting at the string? 

Or is it glad 

For some faint touch with earth? 



15 



A BOOKKEEPER 
HAS SPENT HER VACATION IN THE CITY 

A Pullman porter waves his hand 
To someone in the darkness. 
The gray film of earth unrolls swiftly. 
The towns make queer angles, 
Grotesque in their shadows. 

The columns of figures I add tomorrow, 

dearest, 

will be the clock ticks before you write. 

You will write every day, won't you? 

A bright-eyed village flecks past 

In the soft, furry night. 

The song of the rails jumps to the hills 

And comes back — 

A far, faint tune. 



16 



A BOOKKEEPER HAS SPENT HER VACATION IN THE CITY 



A naked desire runs in the blood of me, 
like the whipping of eager fires. 



The car window cools my cheek, 

as I think of those blue, singing moments 

when you kissed my lips and throat — 



And when your slim hands went down 
the long lines of my body. 



17 



PORTRAIT 

You're a good farmer — we all know that — 
But it seems to me you'd get tired, sometimes, 
Of braggiu' over the way you grow your corn. 
You make me sick! 

You're a player-pianner 
With only one music roll. 



MAIN STREET SKETCH 

A stiffly-smiling shop girl 

(In her cars the steadj^ drij) of minutes) 

Measures heliotrope silk 

With fingers envious, caressing. 



19 



"THE NEXT DANCE IS A FOX-TROT" 

Roll your hips and snap your eyes — 
What do I care ! 

(You're welcome to that poor rube 
who thinks your soul is as fresh 
and white as a Sunday shirt) 

Press your damp cheek against his — 

I hope he likes the reek of your violet perfumie. 

Out in the darkness — prairie darkness — 
the moon is old and blind. 

A knot of men, watching at the door, 
are covered with a fan of light. 

A clarinet struggles 
against the tinny clatter; 
and finally gives it up. 

Your eyes haA^e tried to freeze me. 
You 'Cut me dead, eh? 
Never mind — I won't tell. 
I'd hate to have 'em know I ever fell for you. 

20 



GRAY MOOD 

Snow against a splatter of skyline. 

Stiff black branches 

Creaking when the wind goes by. 

Over all, the gossamer gray dust of dreams. 

The sand in my hour-glass 

Is almost all run out. The fire sleeps. 

I strain to hear echoes — 

Echoes of elfin melodies, that are dying 

In the silence. 



21 



TICK-TOCK 



Life here is as prosaic 

As two old women kissing good-bye 

In a dirty, smoky depot. 

I #ee a flutter of faces; 

a fretwork of advertisements, 

automobiles and street angles. 

Other wives tell me where to buy potatoes; 
what sort of apples keep best in the winter, 
and where to get cleaning women. 

I live in two worlds, and the tick-tock, 
whim-wham of life passes when your eyes 
give me wings. For the time always comes 
when I drink your kisses 
and keep your head on my breathing breast. 

Until that time, 

Over the fronts of buildings and the faces of the crowd 

I scribble the words of your name, your name. 



22 



DECLASSE 

Today the banker drove by in his big car 
And never turned his head to speak to me. 
Now the town thinks I'm a nobody — 
A bird no better than the rest of 'em. 



Shall I go tell those gawks who noticed, 
And leered knowinglj^ at each other, 
That he's still a good pal of mine — 
But he's got a boil on his neck? 



23 



FUTILITY 

Children Avith runny noses, playing on the floor 
AYith a new mail-order catalogue, 

tearing, 

chewing, 

cutting it. 

Trees — with a red moon riding the northern sky 

. . . Writhing, snaky railroads 

. . . Sleek logs, bobbing in blue-gold water 

. . . Steam-fog from paper mills, melting on still air 

. . . Ink and presses . . . 

Life's cogwheels . . . 

Children with runny noses, playing on the floor 
With a new mail-order catalogue. 



24 



GROTESQUERIE 

An office building, by night, 
Is a tired, sleepy thing. 
No life- 
Halls with level piles of dusk. 
Yet tiny feet scurry somewhere — mice ? 

A sinking elevator "\Wnks slyly. 

Mice? .... 



25 



GLIMMER 



I'm just a kid, but sometimes I get pretty deep thoughts. 



Yesterday I went out on "Walnut Creek, 'way over there 
where the red haws are thick. I went alone — 
I wanted to think 'bout what I read in my history. 

This place is where Indians lived. The Sacs and Poxes 
and Sioux tribes — seems like I remember all of 'em. 
Old Chief Black Hawk ... I wonder how many more. 



This place is where Jesse James rode up into, once. 

Bet he had a black horse and he never whipped him, 
'cause he could go like sin. 



Eight over there — where the hill goes all roly-poly 
down to "Walnut Creek — 

why don't they put up some kind of a monument, 
instead of all them billboards? 



26 



III. 

AT THE FEET OE EROS 



MARGINAL NOTE 



Perhaps — now that I think of it — miy moods are not 
always Love's lean and ragged messengers. 
Instead of making a rondeau or villanelle 
to her beauty, it may be better to shine my boots 
and go to meet her. 



I find that once I have kissed her, I write no more 
poetry to her .... until we quarrel. 
Then — ah ! such bitter, exquisite lines ! 



31 



ROMANCE 

Gold o' the moon 

And Pierrot, below my window. 

His song, mellow and silver-thin. 

Is of sweet folly; 

The strings of his mandolin quiver 

Much as I do. 

I wonder if he knows my face 
When he is drunk with song. 



32 



THE PAGAN SPEAKS 

I hold a silver coin worn smooth. 

The head of that proud virgin 
is gone. 

There is left but a greasy sleekness. 

Had it been a shameless woman's head, 
It would have worn no better. 

"What matters if my soul be good 
.... or bad? 



33 



BOREDOM 



My mind has jumped three ditches, leaped two hedges 
and scaled a high stone wall — trying to 
find for you a something-to-do. 



And I have failed. You make me feel you do not care 
I failed. 



I want to go home to a friend who waits. I want to go 
to a whimpering little silence who has an old face, 
and sits in the corner. 



34 



WONDERMENT 

The laee at your throat 
is the white foam 
thrown on gleaming sands. 

I tangle my fingers in it, 
but it falls away, 
softly .... 

Has the deep, white bosom of you 
tossed it up as a promise — 
of the open sea? 



35 



EPISODE 

You unlocked the door 
. . , that heavily paneled, 

beautifully carved door 

which I had always feared 

and admired — 

but touched, never. 

You unlocked the door. 

Letting me glimpse the garden beyond. 

Then you slammed it in my face 
And threw the key into the sea — 
Laughing .... 

I can hear you yet! 



36 



CRI DE COEUR 

Do you suppose that the man who owns you, 
ever doubts you? 
ever thinks another possessed you? 

You n>ho have lain in m^ arms! 

I wonder if there are times in the night 
when a blue flame burns you deeper 
and still deeper; 

Or if your sin rises from you, lightly, 
.... as a smoke curl. 



37 



OLD AGE 

Into the boudoir with its rosy lamps 
Conies daylight, 

Peering through the slits in the window shades 
With eyes cold, leaden. 

The rosy glow slaps him for his rudeness; 

They come to grips. 

And he throws her, struggling, 

On the bed which has a merry coverlet 

Of vine leaves and blood-red butterflies. 



38 



DIMINUENDO 

The blue lips of the sea 

Are so cold upon the shore. 

Long ago — aeons ago — 

The apricot flush faded in the west, 

And a cold blue mist is flowing the streets. 

It washes all with a wild and thin despair 
making things like no color that ever was. 

It seems to have hidden your features. 
Are you there ? 

I have lost the way those bronze lights 
burned in your hair. 

The moon is up. 

Into the distended pupils of my eyes 

the blue sea is sending its shivers. 

What good to mourn always? 

The blue lips of the sea 
Are so very, very cold. 
39 



INFIDELITY 

You think I am very true to you. 

I shudder to think of the charming foolisliness 
to be gone through, before I could pull 
some other woman's head to my breast. 



40 



WHEN LOVE GOES 

My heart is like the dusk that has thrilled 
to an old, old song. 

My heart is the red cave where you held a torch aloft 
to carve your pretty name. 

My heart is like an October sky when the sun 
has dipped over the west — leaving dust. 

My heart is a small room that has known cool breezes 
from a window now closed. 

My heart is like the dent in do\vny pillows 

where has been the soft curve of your body. 

My heart is like an organ left alone. 



41 



FIDELITY 

"Are you sure }}ou love me?" 

What matters whom one kisses, dear? 

Put forgetfulness on your mouth — 
it matters not just how; 
fashion it, a eupid 's bow, 
or what you will. 

So long as you have placed it there . . 



42 



MY SAMPLER 

Birds of blue and gold, 

I hem them in with a pink border. 
Is this forget-me-not lopsided ? 

I hope you do not laugh. 

My bodkin, 

Dancing in the winter sun, 
Has threaded love into the warm wools. 



43 



YOUR LOVE LETTERS 

Thin echoes 

111 a room piled high with dusk. 



44 



TO THE THIRD FROM THE END 
Ziegfield Follies, 1922 

Yes — you're the one I mean, 

Throw those scarves about your head ! 

Scarves of friendly silk 
that kiss your breasts, 
that follow a waving arm 
or fall to dimj)led knee. 

Let your eyes flutter down . . . 
in a tease of a stare . . . 

Curve your feet in the air! 

Make a bacchanal of pink silk 

and gleaming things until my senses ache. 

Riot with your body — 

your God-given body. 

But tell me — did He give you those mousey eyes 1 



45 



COMPLIMENT 

Now that you are gone 

And the room is quite empty, 

I wish I might tell someone 
Of your wonder. 

But someone knows — 

The dusk sings of you like viol strings. 



46 



THOUGHTS WITH APRIL RAIN 

The tall piuk gerauium and I 

Have been talking, 

Until I quite forgpt the time. 

The April rain has been spitting 

At the window, 

But the curtains of laughing chintz 

Turn their backs on it. 

. . . .Fingering old loves, I study 

what is left behind the dust streaks. 

I wonder which of them was best of all, 

which I most loved. 

This one? . . . That one? . . . 

It was the one who made me suffer most. 



47 



TO A CAMEO 

(Lines I shall send to Margotle 
Ta>hen she asJ^s for an explanation). 

Why are you so unchanging? 

He must have had a heart of steel — 

He who made you, for the world to admire. 

Have you no other moods? 

Had He blurred the stone — 

Oh ! ever so little — 

I would have loved you. 



48 



NOVEMBER VIOLETS 

Rusty scales sag 
Beneath the load of fuzzy tea, 
Poured with jerky, uncertain hands 
By old Josef Antonovjftch. 

"Half a pound, please." 

A study in sepia, 

She smiled to his smile. 

Billowing brown satin ; old, faded. 

Gray curl climbing out 

Away from the rest. 

Brown 
and 
silver. 

The scales sag with little starts. 
The finger of the dial points, 
"One pound." 

49 



"SPECIAL ON DJER KISS TODAY" 

'YeSy thaCs a very good almond cream, ma'am." 
. . . .AVhite as the milky April sky, 
like moon shot mists vv'ith heady scents. 
April and he — waiting. 

'This cocoa butter is what men use." 
Just to see him shaving. 
Stroke his face, 
smooth soft face, 
and let one's fingers crawl 
under his collar. 

'Sony, but we're all cut of that color." 
Five o'clock, a swept gold sunset. 
April ghosts climbing the dusk. 
Hurry ! . . . hurry ! 
Push the minutes! 



50 



"special on djer kiss today" 

'There goes the bell, Bessie." 

Burnt-sienna dullness in the streets. 

Will he come? 

Awakening — 

little feet racing clown her veins. 

Pull the perky yellow hat over one ear, 

and go — 

to thrill in his arms ! 



51 



REMEMBRANCE 

I sit here, by my open window, 
And think as yon wished me to, 
When I watch it. 

Bnt even that lilac tree can wither. 



52 



DEFINITION 

Your soul reminds me 
Of dirty, stagnant water. 

When it is stirred 

It becomes even more muddy. 



53 



NOSTALGIA 

Night sifts down 

On the scribble of housetops. 

Birds blow like smoke 

Across a dead, lemon-green sky. 

. . . From the lavender tinsel of my smoke 
Your eyes purr out; 
And little tongues of silence 
Lap it from the air .... 



54 



IV. 
FRAGMENTS: BLUE AND SILVER 



VANITY 

The April sky- 
is very vain 
of his blue, blue eyes. 

Yesterday I caught him 
looking in the mirrors 
of the rain pools. 



59 



PIONEER SKETCH 

A dead moon is dropping down 
A gray and purple sky. 
The dusk light hangs out 
Clumsy shadows on the hills 
And lets us see each other. 

Our fire has hidden its face 
behind gray ash. 

It is cold ... 

But soon the sun 

will lay warm and friendly hands 

upon our backs. 



60 



PASTEL 

Blue and silver frost mark 

Pointing a long finger on my window ; 

Behind it 

(See the ragged, lacey edges!) 

The red gold of morning sun. 



61 



AFTER THE RAIN 

The trees are stiff, artificial, gleaming. 
Their trunks are buried 
in the green straw you sometimes see 
in Easter baskets. 

The walks are little strips that run by the trees. 

Correct, prim, running on to other walks. 

The streets are painted in shining black. 

A little toy house on the corner. 

Yellow brick house, with a fountain 
made of a piece of glass 
hidden in green straw. 

A tiny iron deer looking into the fountain. 

The painted background for this miniature city. 
Two or three chimneys with stiff smoke. 



62 



AFTER THE RAIN 

A fat, ungainly street ear 
standing very still. 

The sky is the bluest blue 
the painter had. 

Over there — in the left corner- 
he did a few fancy tricks, 
plum-blossom clouds. 



What if a little toy man would come out 
of the little house on the corner? 

"When he slammed the door would it startle 
everything out of this stillness? 

Would the paper walls shake, 

the shining green leaves quiver, 

and the background shiver into life? 



63 



POETRY 

I feel the cold rush of matter past me 
"When I watch those birds — 
Skiffs upon a blue-green lake. 



64 



CAMPFIRE 

Fire caverns glow with violet 
And run with molten red gold. 

(I fear, and do not care, 
to turn and see shadows 
that this ghost light shakes out) 

Instead, my eyes sleep on that stark tree, 
Leaning wearily against the moorh 



65 



PRELUDE FOR A SONG 

The dusk, now, is haggard 
As the cheek of an old musician 
"Who plays in an alley, 
At nightfall. 



66 



A DROP OF OIL 

Spread your peacock's tail 

On the black silk of the asphalt. 

It is raining, 

But you fleck and slowly turn 

Your purple, saffron, lilac and jade- 
A sunset in the rain. 

Where would our world fall 

To give the gods a drop of color? 



67 



TENEBRA 

The ruins of the day 
Tumble about me. 

A tree creaks — 

Proud battlements sliding into dust. 



68 



VIGNETTE 

Behind the splash of orange nasturtiums, 
The red hollyhocks are trying to set fire 
To that high stone wall. 
Their little red tongues dart up 
With the joy of young flames — 
Beautifully, uselessly. 

Somewhere callow youths are writing novels, 

radicals are struggling for Freedom, 
rich men are looking for happiness, 
sh)^ maidens are treasuring an ideal. 



69 



DANCE MOTIF: ^fcanJon 



Water in a careless wind 

or 

Ghost lights reeling 
across an October landscape 

or 

Chords that leap up into arpeggios 

or 
Diana's hair 
streaming over her shoulders. 



70 



OUT OF TUNE 

God said something to the world last night. 

The trees were startled to stillness, 
there in the moon shimmer. They heard it. 

But man — 



71 



V. 

BOOK CLOSED ON A FINGER 



EPHEMERA 

I saw a child blowing bubbles, today, and I wanted 

to write a little moral poem about how short life is. 

But why wasle time writing about such a bubble-thing as life? 



lb 



A NEW LOG TO THE FIRE 



The yellow heart of you, flame, 

"Withdrew, 

As if you cared not. 

I hear you hiss 

And see you making dark faces. 

Soon you will come to like that log 

I gave you. 

Soon to wrap it 

In the warm living stuff of you. 

Dancing, laughing, throwing 

From you the fullness of your love, 

Flame, you are a woman ! 

Are you never afraid to give yourself away ? 

When you go skipping up the chimney 

Into nothing. 

Do you forget, as a woman forgets. 

That which made you thus? 

Or do you remember. 

As a woman remembers? 



76 



BOOKS 

Dry husks. 

But sometimes — if you are patient — 
You may find a few golden kernels 
Tliat have escaped the mice of time. 



11 



A PUBLICIST SACRIFICES HIS CHERISHED 
OPINIONS 

I gave my playthings away yesterday. 

Tlie little boy who lives across the street 

Came wide-eyed, to watch me 

Open that dnsty wooden box in the back bedroom. 

It was dark in the closet, 

And I had quite a time finding it. 



A set of crippled lead soldiers, 

A limp teddy bear wnth one shoe-button eye gone. 

Blocks and marbles and rags and glass. 



You know how it feels 

To give up things you have lived long with, 

And fondled. 



78 



ETERNITY 

A woman's figure frozen 
In snow-white jade, 
A cameo. 



79 



A SNEER FOR A CONTEMPORARY 

Shuffle your words in little piles. 
Sort themi — pick out the new ones — 
Place them end to end 
And make a pretty pattern, a lovely pile. 

AYill you always play house with them? 



80 



COLLEGE 
Long slipped by — 

T 

What can I remember? 

... A classroom 

steeped in drowsy afternoon 

... A pipe that smoked well 

. , . Soft, cherry lips 
eager for mine 

. . . And a tenor wail 
on soft June nigrht. 



81 



LONGING 

I liave read a tale of chivalry 
That sets iu me a strange torment. 

I linger in the green twilight of Romance, 
my eyes on a far-off turret where is my love, 
a prisoner. 

She stands erect by the window — black robe 
and gold hair over white shoulders; 
hair alive and warm as the candle's tip, 
Avinking in the wind. 

Ah! that I might be the goblet there before her! 
That she might lift it to her lips — 
Dusk-blue eyes appraising — 
And drink the red Avine of my heart! 



82 



MATHEMATICS 

My soul, cut up in fractions 

And strewn across a dusty blackboard 

. . . Only to be erased. 



83 



A DESPONDENT GENIUS 

I had an Idea. 
A young, strutting Idea 
With the most promising tail feathers. 
I must have been careless, 
For one day he slipped out of the yard 
Into the street — 

And there your dogs killed him. 



84 



TRISTESSE 

Life is a naughty boy 

with an ugly, leering face, 
who throws stones at you 
and then runs — laughing — 
down the street. 



85 



ILLUSION 

Slender vase, 

Tapering like a flower into the sun. 

Eggshell china, and — 
Ah! such rose-leaf tinting. 

Look out! 

Pool, don't touch it! 



86 



VI. 
L'ENVOI 



MID-A]\IERICANS ! 

"Why are you mute? 
Why do you fear to tell us that which you feel 
. . . . or do you feel? 

"Why do you go out, away from us, 

to scream forever of skyscrapers — 
"poems in stone and steel"? 

AVhy make nightly visits to see dirty water 
run under a bridge? 

W^hy spin sympathetic stanzas 

to the maudlin soul of a working girl? 



Why wait for Time to give you a handful of 
lavender ? 



91 



MID-AMERICANS ! 

Does not Annie, who lives across the street, 

have a smile which promises long, blissful hours ? 

Have you ever looked into the clean, 

wind-swept soul of Farmer Weston? 

And if you've ever seen Aunt Rose's hands . . . 

Have you ever felt earth smells twist and quiver 
in the drowsy, poppied sunshine? 

Have you ever heard the noise of cattle moving, 
of corn leaves tossing, 
of horses being fed? . . . 

And M^hat of some bird's shadow 
across pools of the harvest moon? 

Or throbbing sunset fires 
on that far snow bank? 

Or the pearl cobwebs 
that spring rain brings? 



92 



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